Hey everyone. I am fighting off impending doom and need your input. The fileserver at my company is out of space. When I took over the main datastore had 1GB free. I pruned as much as possible and got it up to 10GB. Its slowly trickled down to 4GB. I have impressed upon the CFO as much as I can without being rude about it but he doesn't want to spend money on a new file server despite the fact that our current one has a total of 190GB space and we have 100+ users. (Gasp) He wants to push everyone to clean up their files. So I am doing report after report showing usage etc...but I know that this is going nowhere and meanwhile precious space is dwindling. SO....what to do? I have found that a substantial amount of space is taken up by Outlook mail archives. I was thinking the easiest thing to do may be to buy a USB drive, create 100+ shares (one for each user)...move their respective mail archives to their folder, modify 100+ login scripts (not my design to have one for each user BTW) and map a drive for everyone to be their mail archive folder, then run around to 100+ users across 3 sites and change thier archival settings in Outlook to point to their new mapped drive. (Its only me here). Laughably this is the best I can come up with...and it seems the easiest (lol). Really desperate for better ideas though as I know this is a rickety bandage of a solution at best.

Thanks for the response Andy! The machine currently has 5 (73GB) drives in a RAID 5 configuration. There is a single drivebay available but I am not sure if the array is dynamically expandable. It is a single array hosting both the OS and Data partition (unfortunately).

I have really tried to sell on a new file server but it's just not happening.

You are correct in that they are 2.5" drives. Not sure what you mean about no redundancy as RAID 5 is fully redundant (parity)...although it would not necessarily have been my first choice for performance reasons but then this is all just part of the sh@!pile I have inherited. Ugh...I am between a rock and a hard place here and I have to make a decision and there isn't a good one...lesser of evils really. They really think this "file cleanup" initiative is going to have some impact. I most certainly do not agree but have to go through the motions.

Hmm... not sure what no redundancy on a RAID5 means, as that's the whole point of RAID5. Even if it's not dynamically expandable (which most servers have had as a feature for 10 years or more) you should be able to do it offline. Come in on a Friday night, power the server off, slap the drive in and go into the BIOS of your RAID card and add it to the array then wait the 12-20 hours it'll take to rebuild the array.

Most RAID cards, however, you'll be able to put the drive in, use the Windows tools (Dell ArrayManager, or whatever they're calling it now, etc) to add it to your array. Wait the 12-20 hours, then you have an expanded array. Reboot and Windows will see it as unpartitioned space, which you can expand your data directory use DISKPART.

Make sure your array is healthy before you do this, though. If you already have a failed drive you are asking for trouble.

Last, since it sounds like this server is mostly a file server, backups are pretty easy. The problem is if it's a DC, database server, etc then restoring becomes a problem. The PST problem is pretty typical and if your CFO just won't spend money then he's asking for problems. This may be a terrible thing to suggest, but it might be in your best interest to let things fail... fix it, complain that you have no space and warn that it'll happen again... wait and let it fail again and say you told him so. Now it's in his court. Might not work depending on your situation but I have been known to allow pain to occur in order to get a company to do the right thing.

- Given that the array is composed of 73GB drives, I will only have an extra 73Gb of space. Compared to the cost of the drive (not sure how much really)...plus the amount of time required to accomplish this, is it cost effective when compared to purchasing a file server? Not to mention how long 73GB may or may not last.

- The second thing is, the OS is on the same RAID array as all the data (not my build...I have to keep saying that)...so IMO this all gets a bit more risky/involved.

Make a backup, and then start deleting stuff that is old (Like, 3-5 yars old) and stuff that hasn't been accessed in 12 Months plus.

Make sure your backups can't be lost/destroyed and then wait for the screams and restore what is wanted.

Family photos are good to find as well...if you can find stuff like that, delete it too.

One thing we noticed in here, is work stuff usually gets put in folders that are named as such, family stuff usually gets put in a folder that gets some random name, and whereas work photos get names such as "Town1 - Hole1 - WorkDun" etc, family photos get the Camera Defaults "IMG5A7S1554" or something, find out what the major manufacturers use and then clean those out (After checking they arent work ones)

A good program to look at it "TreeSize Professional", yes it costs money, but it is a damn good program.

Yep, cost effective it isn't. But you're getting 73gb more, which should hold you off until you can get the brass to agree to a new file server.

While the USB drive thingy would work, your performance is going to be HORRIBLE. 100+ users hitting a share over a USB port? My guess is it's USB 1.1 too, since this is an older server. Unusable, IMHO.

Again, my opinion, but we all know what the RIGHT thing to do is. You need a new file server dedicated to the job (think Windows Storage Server, too). So the thing to do here is to NOT solve the problem, but to simply band-aid it until you can do the right thing. 100+ users (and Outlook not only opens the PST, it modifies it, EVERYTIME) on USB 1.1 is going to be a disaster. Even over 2.0 it's not going to be pretty. This gives you the best bet for speed and redundancy.

As for OS and Data on the same RAID array. It's pretty common practice, especially for a file server. I've built a lot of servers this way and performance has always been fine (a LOT of RAID5 bashing going on here at SW that I haven't personally seen a problem). Will RAID1 and RAID5 give you better performance? Not so much that you would notice. If you have enough RAM for the OS, and you have a decent RAID card you're just not going to see a big difference.

I agree that RAID5 gets a bad wrap, but my issue here isn't so much performance as it is the fact that putting the OS on the same array as the Data store makes this much more difficult than if it weren't. Presuming this thing cant be dynamically resized I am either going to have to image or rebuild...

Is your data on the same partition (C:) as your OS? If not, there is no issue. Expand the RAID, then use DISKPART to expand the D: drive. I've done it many times. Just keep in mind that expanding the array simply adds space to the hard drive, it does NOTHING for Windows and you have to expand that as a second step. That's where DISKPART comes in, it's a built in disk utility that comes with Windows.

As for obsolete, that doesn't make any sense. The point of RAID 5 is not to create large arrays, it's to create large REDUNDANT arrays. With the recent advent of RAID6 many companies are going to that so you get EVEN MORE redundancy, but again, the point is not large drives. But remember, RAID6 is simply RAID5 with a second parity drive (of course, it's not an actual drive, but the equivalent loss).

My feeling is, for 90% of data requirements the performance of RAID5 is just fine. RAID6 will be slightly slower as it has to write parity twice but most of that can be masked by a RAID card with a large cache. For those rare 10% applications, RAID10 gives you the performance and redundancy. VERY few companies have this requirement.

Still, with the costs of drives these days RAID10 is well within reach of most companies and the large hard drives make the realized disk sizes still usable so it comes down to preference. My .02

Can you set up an archive on a standard workstation or something while you get this sorted? Any data that hasn't been modified or accessed in two years or more could be dragged over to the archive - a share on an XP Pro machine, or set up a linux file server box. Make a backup (on a DVD or HDD) and store it off site. You shouldn't need to worry about too regular backups on the archive, as the data won't change very often. You could even make it read-only for most users.

In the mean time, do a risk analysis - (likelihood x cost x timescale). That figure should exceed the cost of a new file server, which means if the cash is there, you should be able to order one without hesitation ;)

Remember, RAID5 is striping with parity, so you loose the equivalent of 1 disk on the array. IE: 4 73gb disks will yield you 219gb of space.

RAID10 is mirrored drives with striping, so you have 2 mirrored sets stripped (as a minimum). This means you loose 2 disks to mirroring. IE 4 73gb disks will yield you 146gb of space.

The interesting thing about RAID10 is most people feel it is more redundant then RAID5, which is true, but not as much as believed. You can loose up to 2 drives in a RAID10 set, as long as those drives are on different mirrored sets! If you loose 2 drives on the same mirrored set then the volume is lost.

Remember, RAID5 is striping with parity, so you loose the equivalent of 1 disk on the array. IE: 4 73gb disks will yield you 219gb of space.

RAID10 is mirrored drives with striping, so you have 2 mirrored sets stripped (as a minimum). This means you loose 2 disks to mirroring. IE 4 73gb disks will yield you 146gb of space.

The interesting thing about RAID10 is most people feel it is more redundant then RAID5, which is true, but not as much as believed. You can loose up to 2 drives in a RAID10 set, as long as those drives are on different mirrored sets! If you loose 2 drives on the same mirrored set then the volume is lost.

I had this same problem not too long ago. What I ended up having to do was put the users Archive.pst on their local machine and burn a copy to CD/DVD for my records. That free'd up a good bit of space.

I also scanned the server for image files and applied file compression to those. And since we use AutoCAD products, I looked for all autoCAD .BAK files and removed everything that was over 6 months old (I deleted them, but you could put them on CD or just ZIP them).

One quick thing to check. Is Windows Search running? I have been running out of space on one of my servers a couple of times and noticed that Windows Search is running. I un-install it and a couple of Gig's of storage is freed up. I assume that space was used by the indexes. And I have a fairly small server.

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I had a smililar situation, except it was the Exchange server filling up.

So we went on a plan and had people archive out their old mail from their mailboxes.

Then we picked up an innexpensive NAS and setup the archives on that.

Depending how much space they are actually using up on your fileserver, it could end up being a very cost effective way of saving from buying a new file server. While at the same time ensuring that the outlook archives are safe, NAS with RAID5 of course, and fast to access.

I would first backup all the PST files onto DVD or Tape then move them onto the device. Make it very clear to your users that they can't put new items into their archive folders.

I found it worked fantastic for my situation. Never had a user complain that they couldn't get into their archives. And never lost anyones mail.

Also it's a solution that you can keep in place even after you get a new file server down the road to help segregate your email files from your file server.

If the drives are almost full and you have done as much as possible to free up space then revisit what is being hosted on the drive. If it is all user files, it may be tricky but if it is different shares like "Public", "Users", "Documents" etc. then look at Network Storage Devices and set one up with an IP address and move one or more of your shared folders to the Network Storage Device. Change the logon script to add a new drive letter for the new location of the share but send an email to all users that this is being done because some will have shortcuts to files on their desktops that may not work when the move is made. They just have to know to change the drive letter in their shortcuts or delete the shortcuts and make new ones. A Network Storage Device may be cheaper than a server.

How long will the extra 73GB last? What is your data growth rate? You said you were at 10GB free, now it's 4GB, what was the time interval?

Burn the archive PST's to disc, two copies, one for you and one for them. Let the user load the PST on their local drive for access, don't keep them on the network. Turn off auto-archiving, do it manually as needed.

I hate archiving and PST's. Once users know that you can do it, and will if you need the space, then they don't delete anything again. I have one user that went from needing an archive once a year to now he needs it two or three times. He HAS to save everything...

One alternative is to get the USB, move the archives to it but don't let the users access it. Use it an an IT storage device.

Do you have a data retention policy? Could be worth looking into, but I know I'll struggle with this here, so many different needs.

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Back up the CEO's documents, be very sure that you have them backed up beyond doubt, delete them, wait til the CEO freaks out and signs the server upgrade request, implement the new server and put his files back. Sometimes you have to put things into perspective for them in order to get what you want.